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  1. At Second Life, we are committed to creating a richer, more immersive, and safer environment for everyone. With that spirit, we’re excited to share several important updates and developments that not only aim to improve our virtual world but also ensure that our community continues to thrive in a safe and engaging manner.

    Bringing Second Life Everywhere: Mobile and Desktop Updates

    Our development team is working tirelessly to make Second Life accessible wherever you are, whether you're on a mobile device or sitting at your desktop. While our Mobile App is still in Private Alpha, we’re looking forward to expanding access to more members of our community shortly. Our new App promises to bring all the richness and beauty of Second Life directly to your mobile phones and tablets. Don't miss our latest developer update video for a sneak peek at what’s coming!

    On the desktop front, we're gearing up for a wider release of some of your most requested features for the Second Life Official Viewer. We're particularly excited about rolling out innovations like Mirrors and 2K textures, which were showcased in a recent "Lab Gab" video

    Making Second Life Safer: Strengthening Community Protections

    Our priority has always been to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for all while preserving the freedom of expression that makes our virtual world so special. That’s why we’re working to further enhance the safety and protection of the Second Life platform. These efforts include strengthening some of our community and employee policies as well as evaluating improvements to our age verification process. 

    One area of ongoing scrutiny both internally and externally concerns child-presenting avatars. We recognize and want to acknowledge the vibrant community of residents who enjoy roleplaying as such, and we also feel that it is crucial to reinforce our stance that sexualized ageplay is strictly prohibited. Today, we are updating our Child Avatar Policy to ensure a clear separation and to safeguard all community members. We know that this update has the potential to cause confusion or concern in our community, so we’ve prepared an FAQ which we will continue to update as questions come up.

    Strengthening Internal Policies and Community Engagement

    We recently posted our initial response to community concerns about alleged violations of company and community policies by employees, contractors, and community members. Since that time, we have conducted multiple thorough investigations to look closely at whether there were specific infractions or problematic interactions that needed us to take action. 

    The investigation determined that all Lindens and contractors have stayed in compliance with our own community guidelines, as well as unwritten, ethical guidelines. I do not make this statement lightly, and I know there will be plenty of discussion. What I can say is that there is no incentive, monetary or otherwise, for me to mislead the community. At some point, the community has to trust that we, the Lindens, do well when the community thrives. We may make mistakes along the way, and we know that our community will engage with us when we do. Second Life is an enormous virtual world and we have to walk a very fine line between policing and preserving freedoms while also protecting the future growth and health of Second Life as a platform that respects diversity and creative expression among our community.

    The findings did highlight opportunities for improvement. As a result, we are making updates to our internal policies to raise the standard for how Linden employees should respectfully engage with community members. This addresses multiple forms of engagement including how we present ourselves, how we interact with the community (even in moments of conflict), and how we minimize the perception of conflict of interest and favoritism in our interactions. Additionally, there have been specific actions we have initiated or finalized:

    • Updated our Child Avatar Policy 
    • Updated our internal Policies and Procedures
    • Implemented personnel changes
    • Initiated management improvement programs
    • Committed to Community Roundtables (see below)
    • Committed to increased transparency and accountability

    Looking ahead, we are excited to announce the launch of our Community Roundtable with Second Life Leadership. The first one is scheduled for May 20 at 9:30-11 a.m. PT. This will be an opportunity for community members to connect directly with our top executives, share your input, and discuss ideas on enhancing Second Life. This initiative represents another step in our efforts to improve our community interactions, ensuring that your voice is more directly heard and valued.

    I will be a part of the first Community Roundtable and welcome you all to attend. 

    Building a Better Second Life Together

    All of these updates and initiatives are part of our broader drive to continually improve Second Life. Stay tuned for more, participate in upcoming events, and let's make Second Life better together.

    Oberwolf Linden

  2. Linden Lab
    Latest Entry

    By Linden Lab,

    Happy Wednesday!

    We’re writing to remind everyone that we’ll be holding our monthly Web User Group meeting today at 14:00 SLT in our usual meeting place, where we’ll be discussing our status with ongoing projects and our near future plans for our web properties. As always, we’ll leave plenty of time for Q&A from the community. This meeting is conducted using voice. We're happy for you to contribute in voice or in text, but you'll need to have your voice settings activated. We look forward to seeing you there.

    Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.

  3. April Month 2024 copy.jpg

    🌱🌼🌷

    Residents featured in this image:

    Top Row (from left to right):  

    Middle Row (from left to right):  

    Bottom Row (from left to right):  

    Thank you for sharing your beautiful images with us! 🌸

    For a chance to have your image featured in our social campaigns, submit your work to the Official Second Life Flickr Group

  4. Second Life is getting some new, exciting features that will make the world look even better.

    Mirrors are arriving soon! While we love the realistic reflections PBR materials enable, mirrors take reflections to a whole new level.

    You can create a mirror using a method similar to reflection probes, but with a twist -- when a reflection probe is set to use the “Mirror” option, all surfaces near the probe will exhibit a real-time mirror reflection, including PBR and legacy materials.

    We chose this method to enable maximum flexibility.  For example, you can create a big wall of mirrors and have minimal performance impact regardless of how many mirrors are on that wall. As long as they’re aligned with the mirror reflection probe, they can all show a mirror reflection.

    To conserve performance, mirrors are subject to some limitations. The Viewer will show the effect of only one mirror reflection probe at a time -- the one closest to your camera. Mirrors are planar, so they won’t work very well on the body of a car, for example. Like so many good things in life, mirrors are best enjoyed in moderation.

    Mirrors-3.jpg

    Applying PBR materials to terrain will be possible in the upcoming featurettes release. You will soon be able to apply most GLTF materials to terrain. Initially, PBR terrain will support normal maps and metallic-roughness maps. Emissive textures will not be visible on some machines and transparent materials are not fully supported. We expect PBR materials on terrain to vastly improve the beauty of SL -- because there’s a lot of terrain out there!

    PBR terrain uses triplanar mapping, a texture-mapping technique which is new to Second Life. On steep slopes you will notice far less texture-stretching. To conserve performance, triplanar mapping will be enabled only when the graphics quality setting is set to “High” or greater.

    PBR Terrain Demo - 3.jpg

    With the advances in GLTF PBR Materials and upcoming Terrain materials, we know it is time to increase the texture size limit to 2K (2048x2048 pixels). We are approaching this change  carefully, and are still weighing pricing options for images larger than the current max size. 2K textures will allow artists to add significantly more detail to their creations and do things like efficiently consolidate more UV surface area onto a single asset.

    Mirrors and PBR Terrain will be available on the Beta Grid (Aditi) to start with, on the following regions:

    • Rumpus Room 2048
    • Rumpus Room 2049
    • Rumpus Room 2050
    • Rumpus Room 2051

    Interested in trying out these new features? You can download the Viewer here. Never accessed the Beta Grid before? Here’s information on how to access the Second Life Beta Grid: https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000156725-accessing-aditi

    We can’t wait to see what fun and exciting new things residents create with these featurettes!

  5. The Concierge and Land User Group meeting is a monthly, public meeting for discussion and education on Second Life, useful to both Mainland Residents and Estate owners.

    Topics include any issues relating to Customer Relations/Support or concerning Land in general (mainland, islands, Linden Homes, estates, auctions, etc.).

    Join Wendi, Vix, and members of the Land team, on Wednesday at 12pm PT at Linden Estate Services.  All are welcome.

     

    Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.

  6. Hi Everybody! 

    I would like to introduce a new member of the Linden Support team, Boxy 5000. 

    Boxy 5000 is a virtual assistant/support bot trainee. 

    But wait, wasn’t there already a chatbot who answered questions for premium users? Indeed there was! Boxy 3000 was the earlier model of the trainee chatbot. 

    We are learning from some design flaws and moving forward with a more advanced bot. Boxy 3000 has been re-invented and given an extra 2000! 

    But wait a second time! Won’t this bring about the machine apocalypse? Not just yet–Boxy 5000 is more advanced and learns as they go but Skynet is still a few upgrades away. 

    The upgraded bot will be a 24/7 support option for both premium and non-premium residents! (Previously only available for premium customers.)

    Boxy will have the ability to answer commonly asked questions, keep you up to date on current issues, help with ticket submission and in some cases handle a support request. 

    Boxy has uses for all residents, from early adopters to fresh new faces. 

    For new and more casual residents Boxy is available to help them find the support they need. 

    For our seasoned veterans Boxy can offer support options for some specific requests. Specifically, Boxy will be able to submit an abuse report on your behalf and in some cases help with the restart of a region!

    Boxy will continue to learn as we go. Boxy might not have all the answers currently, but we will continue to review questions posed and help the bot to better answer your support queries. 


    We realize that a chat bot is not a substitute for a customer support representative, and this bot is not meant to be. It is however meant to help when we are unavailable or may be experiencing higher call volumes. 

    For premium residents Boxy will only be the first point of contact before being passed to a support representative during office hours. Utilize Boxy to help better explain your issue once you are transferred to a support representative. Outside of office hours Boxy can help or create a ticket for when we are back in the office.

    The ability to get an answer to your question or to get your issue resolved without having to wait until our Support Lindens are available is Boxy’s primary directive.

    Anyone interested in saying hello to Boxy can access it by logging into our support portal. The Boxy 5000 chat widget should appear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.  

    Boxy 5000.jpg

    Boxy 5000, it’s advanced… 

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